The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

62 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 6 Philip Hall Coombs , 90, the first assistant secretary of State for educa- tional and cultural affairs, died on Feb. 15 in Chester, Conn. Mr. Coombs was born in Holyoke, Mass., and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in 1937. He did graduate work in economics at the University of Chicago, and became an instructor in economics at Williams College. In February 1961, shortly after taking office, President John F. Kennedy named Mr. Coombs to the new position promoting education and American culture as tools of diplomacy. At the time, he was pro- gram director for education at the Ford Foundation and had been an educational adviser to the govern- ments of India and Turkey. With his White House appoint- ment to run the newly created Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Mr. Coombs sought to bring a new dimension to foreign policy by putting the State Department and its embas- sies in closer touch with leading cul- tural and educational figures and organizations overseas. While hold- ing that post, he moved to Paris to organize the International Institute for Educational Planning; as its first director, he advised member-states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on steps to improve their educational systems. “We praise education’s virtues and count on it to help the new generation solve great problems which the older generation has failed to solve,” Mr. Coombs told an international meeting in Washington in 1961. “But when it comes to spending more money for education, our deeds often fail to match our words.” In mid-1962 Mr. Coombs resigned from the State Department. In a let- ter to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, he stated that bureaucratic obstacles and a dearth of funds had hampered the department’s educational mis- sion. Still, he said, he had succeeded in making “initial progress.” The bureau he organized survives today. Mr. Coombs stayed on as director of the international institute in Paris through 1968. From 1970 until his retirement in 1992 he was vice chair- man, and later chairman, of the International Council of Economic Development, where he focused on improving education in rural regions and developing countries. He was the author of a number of books, including The Fourth Dimen- sion of Foreign Policy (1964), Edu- cation and Foreign Aid (1965), Attack- ing Rural Poverty: How Nonformal Education Can Help (1974) and The World Crisis in Education: The View From the Eighties (1985). Mr. Coombs is survived by his wife of 65 years, Helena Brooks Coombs of Chester, Conn.; a son, Peter B. Combs of Essex, Conn.; a daughter, Helena H. Weeks of Salem, Conn.; three grandchildren; and two great- granddaughters. Jonathan W. Dublin , 53, a Foreign Service officer, died of a heart attack in Al-Hilla, Iraq, on Feb. 18. Mr. Dublin graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in computer systems. He served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy Submarine Service as a nuclear engineer before joining the State Department in 1999 as an information management spe- cialist. His first posting was to Rabat. In 2001, Mr. Dublin became a Foreign Service officer, serving as a consular officer in Kingston and as a narcotics affairs officer in Bogota. While in Bogota, he volunteered for TDY in Iraq, and was serving as a political officer in Al-Hilla at the time of his death. Mr. Dublin is survived by his wife, Diana; a son, Christian; and daugh- ters, Veronica, Anna and Bettina. Donations in Mr. Dublin’s name may be made to the American Heart Association (https://donate.american heart.org/ecommerce/aha/aha_index. jsp). David Elmo Foy , 51, a Foreign Service officer, was killed by a suicide bomber outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi on March 2. Mr. Foy joined the Foreign Service in 2003, and was posted to Bishkek. Last September, he took over as facili- ties manager at the consulate in Karachi, an unaccompanied post. Foy I N M EMORY u